On walking to school
Changes for Takoma and Silver Spring
by Sue Katz Miller
March 2007– I grew up in a woodsy New England suburb, with houses set far apart. Neighbors didn’t interact much, and no one walked to school because there weren’t any sidewalks. Later in life, I spent three years in West Africa, and three years in Brazil, in cities with lively street cultures. When I returned to the US, I swore I would raise my children in a community that better reflected the diversity of the world. I wanted my children to feel deeply rooted in this utopian home, to feel an intimate sense of place. I pictured them walking to a neighborhood school. And so we moved to Takoma Park.
Of course that ideal—the child meeting up with friends and kicking autumn leaves on the way to school—doesn’t work out for every child, even here. Some children need resources or an environment that the neighborhood school cannot provide. And some are simply at the mercy of the behemoth Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) system. MCPS, the 17th largest school system in the US, is a vast jigsaw puzzle of interlocking schools created by decades of battles over school boundaries, expanding and shrinking student populations, new development, tight capital budgets, and the attendant issues of race and class. Instead of walking to a school nearby, many MCPS students get bused across a city, or into neighboring communities.
But now, a major change is on the horizon for four of our local schools—Takoma Park Elementary, Piney Branch Elementary, East Silver Spring Elementary and Sligo Creek Elementary. Assuming the funding comes through, these four pieces of the MCPS puzzle are going to be reconfigured in a way that will bring more kids within walking distance of their assigned schools. Thanks to savvy local PTA leaders and school principals, and, in this case at least, empathetic MCPS bureaucrats, more kids will be able to walk to nearby schools, to dawdle with friends, stomping on ice puddles or stopping to catch cicadas.
How did this happen? For years, kids from East Silver Spring have had to travel to Piney Branch Elementary in Takoma Park for 3rd to 5th grade. And some Takoma Park kids across the old PG County line have been bused clear across Takoma to Sligo Creek Elementary. These awkward patterns were created when the new Montgomery Blair was built and Takoma Park unified into Montgomery County, about ten years ago. But now, both Takoma Park Elementary and Sligo Creek Elementary are overcrowded.
So MCPS convened a “roundtable” where parents (including Chris Barclay, who is now on the Board of Education) and principals designed a solution endorsed by all four of these school communities. Under the new plan, MCPS will build additions onto both Takoma Park Elementary and East Silver Spring Elementary. East Silver Spring will become a K-5 school, so more kids can stay in their own neighborhood. Takoma Park Elementary (K-2nd) and Piney Branch (3rd-5th) would then have room to take in what they hope will be some 80 Takoma Park kids currently assigned to Sligo Creek Elementary, relieving overcrowding there, and bringing these kids “home” to Takoma Park.
My son is a 4th-grader at Piney Branch Elementary, a miniature global village on Maple Avenue. Piney Branch families speak languages including Spanish, French, Amharic, Somali, Urdu, Bengali, Tagalog, Ewe and Bembe. At the elementary school level, our kids are still relatively innocent of ethnic, economic or legal-status divisions. They make new friends easily, often with the students who happen to end up in their homeroom. And that has meant Takoma Park kids and East Silver Spring kids forging close friendships across all of these lines.
Nevertheless, melding these two local school populations into one community has always been a challenge for Piney Branch. East Silver Spring kids can’t walk home, which means many of them can’t stay after school unless the school finds money for an activity bus. The two sets of PTA parents, the two sets of kids, all have to adjust to a new school and to each other. The Takoma families, because they’re in their home territory, and because they outnumber the East Silver Spring families almost three to one, tend to dominate. The East Silver Spring families who rely on public transportation have to take a bus to get to a PTA meeting, or to volunteer in the classrooms. Some East Silver Spring families have felt alienated and even disrespected by the statistically whiter and wealthier Takoma Park families. It’s asking a lot. “I’ve always seen the three schools as one community,” says PBES Principal Bertram Generlette. “So it feels like we’re losing a part of us. But I understand their need to be in their own community.”
When East Silver Spring families explain that they want to keep their kids in their own neighborhood, some Takoma parents feel betrayed. I guess this is a reality check on utopia. Not everybody wants to be a part of Takoma Park – they just want to be close to home. East Silver Spring has a higher percentage of low-income families and Spanish-speaking families. So many Takoma parents assumed that East Silver Spring families would jump at the chance to have their kids bused into Takoma. But in surveys and community meetings, it is clear that what East Silver Spring wants most is to continue to build their own community and send their kids to their own neighborhood school. To walk to school. “Most people like the idea of staying in the same school for a longer period of time,” says Leigh Gilles-Brown, a former East Silver Spring Elementary PTA President. “It’s one less transition for their kids.”
Montgomery County prides itself on being “one of the most diverse school systems in the nation.” The hope is that the Takoma Park students who will come over from Sligo Creek Elementary will help to offset any loss of diversity caused by the departure of the East Silver Spring kids.
But also, it’s important to keep in mind that all of these schools are unusual in their exuberant diversity of kids. Last year, Piney Branch had 42% black, 28% white, and 24% Hispanic students. The “black” category itself is truly diverse, and includes a longstanding local African-American middle class, recent African immigrants from all over the continent, and the children of interracial families. The other schools all skew a little bit one way or the other from this balance, but all have significant percentages in all three “racial” categories, with no one group in the vast majority. This balance is part of what makes our “downcounty” neighborhoods so unique.
Takoma and East Silver Spring kids will still meet up, but it won’t be until they both feed into Takoma Park Middle School. My seventh-grade daughter has been tight with her East Silver Spring friends since her Piney Branch days. She worries that after the changes in articulation, “At middle school, people are going to stay more in the groups they came in with.” She sounds wistful. It’s an issue the Middle School, like most middle schools, must address. And it means we will all, students and parents, have to work a little harder at building community outside of the schools.
East Silver Spring will need county resources now to develop a strong “K though five” program. “We insisted on a guarantee of some type of special magnet program,” says parent Gilles-Brown. “If you’re going to have a bigger school and a browner school, we will need that to compete.” But at least, getting the entire community involved in building a strong school will be easier because East Silver Spring is truly a local school, serving neighborhood kids, and neighborhood parents. After immigrating from around the world, families want to put down deep roots, and feel real ownership of their local school. The school, embedded in the community, becomes the social hub of a vibrant neighborhood. That’s my vision for East Silver Spring, for Takoma Park, for all of us.
Sue Katz Miller (suekatzmiller-at-yahoo-dot-com) is a former Newsweek reporter, and current PTA President at Piney Branch Elementary.
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